Hateland_A Long, Hard Look at America's Extremist Heart by Daryl Johnson

Author:Daryl Johnson [Johnson, Daryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Political Ideologies, Radicalism, Social Science, Violence in Society, terrorism
ISBN: 9781633885165
Google: KMdkDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 163388516X
Goodreads: 46166664
Publisher: Prometheus
Published: 2019-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

On February 26, 2012, a twenty-nine-year-old Neighborhood Watch volunteer named George Zimmerman called the police in Sanford, Florida, to report a suspicious person walking through the Retreat at the Twin Lakes neighborhood.

When police arrived minutes later, Trayvon Martin—a seventeen-year-old African American—was lying face down in the grass, having been shot in the chest by Zimmerman. Martin had died almost immediately. Zimmerman, bleeding from his nose and head, was handcuffed and taken to the police station where he was questioned. Five hours later, the police determined that there was no evidence to refute Zimmerman's claim that he had acted in self-defense and released him.

Two days later, Martin's father, a resident of the neighborhood where his son was shot, identified photographs of Trayvon after filing a missing person report. He retained an attorney, but either unsatisfied with, or simply not trusting, the Sanford police department to handle the case appropriately, Martin's father also hired a publicist on March 5. Two days later, the shooting received its first national coverage via Reuters. By March 8, the story was exploding into the hyperactive and politicized media ecosystem that had emerged over the past few years.

Left-leaning outlets like the Young Turks and Huffington Post were among the first high-profile broadcasters of the events, questioning why Zimmerman had gone free. The next day, mainstream media followed as ABC World News featured the story. Hashtags related to the shooting began trending on Twitter, with many people angrily demanding that Zimmerman be prosecuted. As it grew, through both social and traditional media, the shooting became the first story of 2012 to eclipse the ongoing presidential race.

Under the pressure of intense media coverage, Zimmerman was eventually charged with second-degree murder. During an April 27, 2013, interview, Zimmerman's lawyer, Mark O'Mara, said, “I think if I could do away with all media, including all social media, I would not have an involvement in a criminal case.”1 The Martin family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, marveled at the impact of social media in bringing the case to court: “We didn't engage social media,” he said. “It's almost as if social media engaged us.”2

The prosecution of George Zimmerman is just one example of the chain reactions set off by reports of a teenager killed in disputed circumstances after a scuffle, a story that likely would have never punctured the nation's consciousness a decade earlier. Instead, the Trayvon Martin case became a near perfect example of how the hyperactive, outrage-culture that had begun to typify social media could set off chain reactions throughout social media and into the offline world.

For example, the event inspired #blacklivesmatter, a hashtag that became a mainly leaderless national movement. In the years following the Martin shooting, Black Lives Matter (BLM) had continued to use social media to organize high-profile public protests against police shootings of African Americans.

By 2014, Black Lives Matter had faced some criticism for its tactics and claims about racially charged police killings. But, after two on-duty police officers were killed in New York City, a flood of right-wing outrage was unleashed.

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